Most Shared

The Season Two Premiere of the Hit Show

“For all the times I’ve driven past, I’ve never been here before,” Victor Cruz confessed last night, surveying the scene on the USS Intrepid. Wearing a pair of Christian Louboutins he acquired at Thursday’s Fashion’s Night Out, the Giants wide receiver was on board the aircraft carrier, which now hosts the Sea, Air & Space Museum in its permanent home along the West Side Highway, to attend the second-season premiere of Homeland, hosted by Time Warner Cable, Showtime, and **Andrew Saffir’**s Cinema Society. One of last year’s most critically acclaimed shows, Homeland tracks the story of a CIA operative who suspects that national hero Sergeant Nicholas Brody’s alliances were swayed in the several years he spent as an al-Qaeda POW.

Repeatedly referred to as **President Obama’**s favorite show, Homeland attracted a host of notable fans last night. Valentino Garavani, in town with Giancarlo Giammetti to design costumes for the New York City Ballet’s September 20 annual fall gala, said, “I saw it for the first time this summer on my boat. She gave it to us,” nodding toward Homeland star Claire Danes. Benjamin Walker and Stark Sands, self-described huge fans, both said they came to support Danes first and foremost. Bruce Weber, seated with his wife, Nan Bush, described how “I started watching [the show] because one of my dogs really loves it. My dogs have different tastes. Some will only watch Animal Planet.”

After the screening in one of the _Intrepid’_s vast hangars, guests hustled upstairs to the even more enormous flight deck, where they were ushered through rows of decommissioned helicopters and fighter jets to observe a dazzling fireworks display over the Hudson River. Standing under the Space Shuttle Enterprise, cast members Morena Baccarin, David Harewood, and Mandy Patinkin caught up over champagne and sliders as actress Helen McCrory laughingly complained that she “had to pay a baggage fee at Heathrow because my Vogue was too heavy!” McCrory was referring to the September issue featuring her husband and Homeland star Damian Lewis, who was in a blue Delave linen Tom Ford suit he seemed to have grown quite attached to. “I can’t believe it, but I think Tom’s going to make me give it back!”